“You lookin’ for ‘Say Hey’s’ house?”

Howard Russell has tended yards in this quiet Fairfield neighborhood for about a quarter century, so he knows an explorer when he sees one. He stops the mower he’s pushing on this hellish-hot morning, wipes streams of sweat from his face with a towel, and powers down the motor so better to hear.

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s right there,” he says, pointing towards a not-so-small forest on a lot near where I’m standing on 57th St. “Right there.” He paused. “Right there behind all that.”

All that was a massive cluster of bushes, shrubs, trees, and who knows what wildlife swallowing the entire lot and digesting a house that struggles to peek through one side of the growth. Struggles to be seen. Struggles to be remembered.

Struggles to stand.

Struggles to live.

Willie Mays – affectionately known as the ‘Say Hey Kid’ – once lived there. Lived there, played there, and thrived there in his youth.

Signed a Major League Baseball contract there.

This house cannot die.

Mays was born in Westfield, a Black steel town that no longer exists. His father bought the house in nearby Fairfield, where aunts Sarah and Ernestine also lived and helped raise Willie.

A Google Maps photo shows it was once a comfortable light-green 1,641-square-foot home with three bedrooms and a bath, representative of a comfortable middle-class street. Three steps up from the street to an elevated front yard, where a white gas light guards the walkway leading to seven white steps to a small porch.

The porch and front windows are protected by a white awning and a brick chimney rises from the right side of the house. One can envision a fireplace Willie and his family might have used on chilly Southern winter nights. Or as decoration.

Google Maps notes the photo was taken in 2011. Long ago enough for an untended yard to succumb to all that now hiding a vital gem in a city itself straining to survive the ravages of time.

Only the chimney rises beyond the tall brush. A small window is visible on the right side of the house—like an aging eye straining for a last look at a world that long ago became blind to it.

“A lady kept it up until she died,” Russell shares. “Then her kids tried until they left.”

The house, according to Jefferson County tax records, was owned by a Mary A. Hinson until 2008, then by her heirs the following year. It then came into the hands of the Seminole Brothers, LLC, which owned it until 2022.

“Some young people moved in,” Russell said. “They didn’t keep it up worth a flip.”

It landed with the Fairfield Land Bank, where abandoned, tax-neglected properties go with the hope of being sold to new owners who promise to revive and restore the property.

Ben Yother wants to ensure that Willie Mays’ home does not die.

A Birmingham native who lives in Vestavia, Yother still speaks of its former resident with youthful reverence. “Around eight years old, Willie Mays was my favorite player,” he told me. Yother has applied to buy the house from the Land Bank and wants to restore it not for profit but for prosperity. “I don’t want to make a dime from it,” he said.

Yother values the proud and prolific role of baseball in Birmingham during the days of Mays’ youth. “The Birmingham Industrial League,” he said, “the ACIPCO teams that were so important in the area, the Southern Negro League, the final Negro League World Series that Willie Mays played in. The history has always been important to me.”

He wants young people to climb the three steps from the street, walk the path towards the steps onto the porch, then walk through the house where Mays once lived without costing them a nickel. “If I have to restore it myself, I will,” he said. “My wife won’t be happy about it, but I’ll do it.”

It will take a lot to rescue that house from the forest, the ravages of time, and more. It has not only been negated by neglect, Russell said, but a couple of fires set by arsons that left much of the back of the house almost unsalvageable. Folks died there, too, he said.

Yother and a friend in the contracting business navigated through the growth and reached the porch. They dared not step onto any floors. “We didn’t think they could hold any weight,” he said. He believes the house can be revived while acknowledging that time has the advantage. “It’s at last call,” he says.

Timing has an advantage, too. It can’t be lost that this house, this home, is holding on now. Holding on in obscurity about a long centerfield throw from Rickwood Field (at least for Willie), where a teenaged Mays made his Negro League debut.

Holding on after more than a decade of denial and deterioration.

Holding on amid MLB’s multimillion-dollar restoration of that old ballpark—the oldest in America. And as MLB finally embraced its Negro League roots and honored the men and women for whom those leagues were the only option in a segregated nation.

Holding on as Mays has taken his last breath, passing away late last month at the age of 93.

The Fairfield Land Bank is expected to meet soon to consider Yother’s application. He’s received quiet support from many—from the San Francisco Giants, from city officials in Fairfield and Birmingham, from folks at MLB.

From myriad fans of the sport, fans of Black baseball history. Fans of history.

From many who agree: This house – this home – simply cannot die.

Roy S. Johnson is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame, an Edward R. Murrow Award winner, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. His column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj.